This client was rear-ended on I-35 in rush hour traffic. After the negligent driver's insurance paid their policy limits, the Plaintiff made a claim on her own insurance the policy coverage she had pay for over many decade. Allstate denied her claim and forced her to go to trial. The jury sent Allstate a different message.
Transcript:
Speaker: Welcome to Hill Law Firm cases, a podcast discussing real world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real, and these are the cases we handle on a day to day basis. When people buy car insurance, they oftentimes add what is called UM/UIM coverage.
What that does is that provides an additional layer of coverage if somebody is injured by an under-insured or an uninsured motorist. Unfortunately for Texans, some changes in the law have meant that these insurance carriers oftentimes do not honor these policies. They low ball, they deny and they delay paying these claims. I handled one such claim for a friend's mother. She was injured grievously in an I35 rear end collision in San Antonio.
What happened next was pure abuse by her insurance company. The other driver's insurance paid their policy limits. She had about $80,000 in medical bills and the other driver's insurance was 100,000 and they paid all of it. When she made a claim on her own uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage, they offered her $500, and then they withdrew that offer. This was a case against Allstate, and Allstate is famous for doing this to people.
Now, this information isn't confidential because Allstate made this case go to trial. They took an elderly woman to trial over the policy that she had been paying for for decades. She paid premiums on time for decades, and when she tried to make a claim for the policy she paid for, they made her a zero offer and they forced her to go to trial. They do this to bully people because they know that the expenses and the time are not worth it to most people. I tried this case on behalf of this woman.
The jury didn't agree with Allstate, even though Allstate hired experts that cost them $2,000 an hour for their deposition, the jury didn't buy it. After a three or four day trial, the jury returned a verdict for this woman for $386,000. Cases against your own insurance company are some of the most frustrating cases for clients as well as attorneys. We have to explain to our clients that, yes, you did pay for this policy and yes, you're current on your end of paying, but they're not going to pay you what they owe you.
We have to explain to them the changes in Texas law, and we have to explain to them that the insurance company doesn't care, that they make their money by holding onto this money and delaying the claim. We continue to represent clients and claims against their own insurance companies because it's important to us that people aren't bullied.
